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Work hard, Play hard... et un peu de déconne!

Quand il n'est pas occupé par son herbier, le petit P sème des pierres blanches dans la forêt... Adepte de vieilles séries policères allemandes, il n'est pas peu commun de le trouver en train de manger la choucroûte devant la télé!


29 septembre 2008

Just a pause to reflect about something...

You just have to love Sarah Palin



Yes, you do...
Hehe...
P

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22 septembre 2008

The one where I had to kiss my iPod goodbye...

My travels to UAE part II - Ramadan

Where had I left... Oh yeah...
Upon the anouncement of our imminent landing in Dubai, my glance landed on the magazine "Time Out Dubai". On the cover of the magazine, this enticing title "The Dos and Don'ts of Ramadan"... I quickly snatched the mag and opened it at the indicated page...

+++ Aside +++
Now what just about everyone know is that during the month of Ramadan, Muslims don't eat or drink while the sun is up.
It's a bit more than that actually. It's a time of enlightment and spirituality...
From dawn*, nothing is allowed to enter the body as long as the sun hasn't set. That includes chewing gum, smoking or even having sex.
... but also of giving and sharing
After dark, people eat and play games in tents. This meal is called the Iftar and it's quite interesting to witness
+++ End aside +++

DON'T sing or dance in public , any form entertainment is prohibited during Ramadan
And then I tought "oh shit"... Only thought, because the previous line was

DON'T swear in public during Ramadan. In normal times, it will only earn you a frown, but it is a severe insult during Ramadan

I'm some what lost... If you know me, you know that:

This is going to be hard

Bye bye iPod

Snif...
Cheers,
P

* and please distinct dawn and sunrise. Dawn being the moment preceding sunrise, where the sun illuminates the sky without being apparent. This is also one of my pet peeves in french vocabulary:
L'aube et l'aurore en français. L'aube étant le crépuscule du matin et l'aurore le lever du soleil.
Le crépuscule définissant le matin ET le soir l'instant durant lequel le ciel est éclairé par le soleil sans que le soleil ne soit apparent.

PS: Matt damon about Sarah Palin

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15 septembre 2008

How I didn't get to sit back, relax and enjoy Cameron Diaz's purple bra...

My travels to UAE part I - Censorship

Aaaahhh... Gotta love all those little questions:
- Champagne? Orange Juice? Water? No thanks!
- Something else? No thanks!
- Little appetizers No thanks!
(she stills brings them)
- Hot towel Yes please!

And then finally: Sit back, relax and enjoy your flight!

I watch "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and it starts with the little disclaimer:

This movie has been cropped to fit this screen and eidted for content

I don't really pay attention and watch the movie, stopping once for the following consideration:

In the end, if it's about Harrison Ford kissing that 60 year old woman with a bit of impatience, I'm not even really sure I'd like to see it... In other words, never mind!

Then I watch a couple of episodes of Family Guy. Just btw, Emirates - Best... Airline... Ever... The inflight entertainment loads another episode of the same sitcom, when you're done. I'm just figuring about 6 potential hours of HIMYM. Legend... Dairy!

After a couple of Family Guy episodes with that bizzare intro with only Brian and Stewie and an excellent foie gras (albeit served too cold to my likings), I decide to switch back to movies...

I know! Life is really tough...

So I figure I'll watch What happens in Vegas . Now I have been scrolling for a couple minutes and I can't really wait for the movie to begin so I fast forward a bit...

The movie is a riot... I just love it!

And then somewhere after an hour and ten minutes, Ashton Kutcher, lovable stupid loser ad perpetum says something that will crush my world

Well, what is it with you women and granny panties. Do you really mean to say "we will never have sex ever again" *

They're comfortable and supporting just like men should be

Well your purple bra in Vegas was really hot


Oh my God! He said purple bra... I should have seen Cameron Diaz in a purple bra, but I didn't...

Grrrr...

I still watch the end of the movie. I'm a sucker for romantic comedies and today I ceremonially proclaim myself to old to change that... Hehe!

Well, long story short, I went to the beginning of the movie after that and there it was staring me back in my face:

This movie has been edited for content!

Cheers,
P "I'll live... really!"

* With the much vaunted speaking.like.every.word.is.its.own.sentence

PS: Episodes of those great american sitcoms restart from Sept 22nd - Download on Amazon to avoid censorship... Possible? Who knows?
PPS: Today, just to test of course, I tried to retrieve some stuff from the internet today and everything was blocked - OMG OMG OMG...
No wonder men are not allowed to look at women, that would trigger a lot of unreleased... Hmmm...
Let's just say the western guys have Maxim, FHM, oh well...

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10 septembre 2008

Wow... What a nice pair of gray pants!

"Probably 1% spandex, 6% elasthane and 93% coton. I really like the rugged grey look".
That's what I could have been thinking, while watching a young lady walking in front of me. Said pants spanning from a pair of very nice black leather mid-heeled shoes all the way along very nice legs to an adorable... belt!

But let's take a step back: I've been in Montreal for a while and almost gave up blogging. There are various reasons:
  • Life was taking up so much time. The project was quite intensive and all side activities all did require more time than I had in the first place.
  • Facebook makes many purposes of the blog quite moot: Status updates and photo-sharing are no longer an exclusive of bloggers. You could even argue that everyone blog their lives on facebook.
  • Losing time on the internet was taken up by this amazing online postcards site

But then I went on holidays and reflected about that among other things*.
Maybe I need to refocus my blog on opinion pieces and humorous updates of my life? May some commentary about political** and world news?

And then I went to the military and saw a very good new american sitcom: Californication, where a man very committed to his midlife crisis blogs about his (sex-)life as an author.
At that point I thought: I need humor, politics and sex in my blog... Here you are:

And then I was back in Switzerland and several people told me:
How was Canada? I read on FB that you've been to Vegas? Cool! Oh and by the way: I just loved your piece on elevators and hookers!

That's it, I'm back in business...

It was a sunny lunchtime in the Niederdorf and I was walking with my take-away basil chicken in a little bag and my iPod softly feeding me some mid-nineties forgotten rock songs and the odd Julio ballad. When I noticed this pair of pants and the matching vest with long black hair to top it off. My attention focussed on a perfectly shaped... belt.

I tuned my pace to be just 3 meters behind her and at same speed.
After maybe 20 seconds, I decided that I had to see if shirt and make-up*** were kept the slient promises of the ... well... belt!

+++ Aside +++
Now in order to take a nice discrete peek, you have to overtake at considerable speed (suited up, I call it a decisive businessman walk) and then stop in front of a shop, you are then at a 90° of the frontside. Thankfully the Niederdorf offers an abundance of art galleries that lend themselves to this exercise.
+++ End aside +++

For the males among the readers: a very nice face, dark brown skin, but even that was not the best feature... Thank god for tense second shirt buttons!
For the females: Pink shirt, tailored, very nice...

So there I am wondering for a second why old gravures of the city of Zurich are labelled in french and discretly watching a young woman approaching and then passing in my back. I intended to resume my walk and go eat my take away food, when she stops beside me and takes a look at lifesize photographs of almost naked people. Attractive and intriguing... Hmmm... I stay there beside her about twenty seconds and resume walking shortly after her, repeating the exercise, but instead entering my office building - that's 2 seconds of 90° of front!

I'm waiting for my elevator, when she enters the mini-lobby too, so I figure she comes to the therapeutical massage salon...
Nope! She rushes a bit and steps into the elevator with me. At this point it is clear, she is one of the many new people of the office that I don't know. Wow!

I'm Patrice...
I'm Alicia****
[short silence - both faces brighten up, big smiles]
You're the one I'm meant to talk to about this one project, we've exchanged a couple mails.
Yes, I'll just eat and drop by for coffee. Are you very busy?
No no...

She gets off the elevator, I stay in and whisper to myself
"Welcome back to Zurich"

Hehe...
P

* Also the fact that anyone visiting my blog did so via google by looking up such atrocities as "Jeune trainee hard", "M109 Kawest" or the odd "video super hard Claudia Schiffer"
** instead of writing long comments on my socialist youth friend's blog
*** Composing this anecdote reminds me strikingly of the shock I once provoked in my Canadian team after alluding to the recto and the verso. Of course this can be attributed to the lingering diktat of political correctness, the closeness to the word "rectal" that will get you fired any day, but I prefer to chalk it up to plain old ignorance seeing that both words mean the same in english:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recto
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verso
**** of course, this name has been changed to protect privacy

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